20 \ GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN (11/22/76) (CInema Village; April IQ-20.) CASEY'S SHADow-Walter Matthau, full of his usual wit and humor, and with his appealing crumpled face, in a horse movie that is one of the nicest things in a long time to take a child to. And he isn't overshadowed even by the horses. (Baronet. . . . fjJ Olympia; starting April 19, tentative.) CHAFED ELBOWS (1967 )-.A. cheerful assau1t on motherhood analysis, venal surgeons, cops, Pop painters, et al. Directed by Robert Downey in a tone of cawing mockery, but not trying quite hard enough; knockabout high spirits can't quite carry the comedy. (Cinema Village; April 14-15.) CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND-This cele- bration of the wonders up there in the skies is the best-humored of all technological-marvel fantasies. It has visionary magic, along with a love of surprises and a skeptical, let's try- it-on spirit. VV ritten and directed by Steven Spielberg. (I 1/28/77) (Ziegfeld) COMA-Geneviève Bujold as a surgical resident in a Boston hospital. She discovers that large numbers of young healthy patients have gone into irreversible comas while undergoing minor surgery, and then-vegetablized-have been packed off to a facility that provides long-term life-support systems. The story glides along smoothly, as if computer-oper- ated, but it doesn't give you a lift. Michael Crichton directed. With Michael Douglas, Richard Widmark, Rip Torn, and Elizabeth Ashley. (2/6/78) (Greenwich; through April 13. . . . ç St. Marks Cinema; starting April 14.) COMING HOME-The time is 1968; the place is Los Angeles. Jane Fonda plays the proper, repressed wife of a hawkish Marine captain (Bruce Dern); after her husband leaves for Vietnam she volunteers for ,,\ork in a vet- erans' hospital and n1eets a paraplegic (Jon Voight), who is in a rage of helplessness. Hal Ashby directed this intuitive yet amorphous movie, which falls apart when he resorts to melodramatic cross-cutting. (2/20/78) (Cin- ema I.) COUSIN. COUSINE (1976)- Jean-Charles Tac- chella's cheerful film about a big family and two Rabelaisian apostates within it. In French. (68th St. Playhouse.) DONA FLOR AND HER Two HUSBANDs-Duected by Bruno Barreto. In Portuguese. (Paris.) THE FIRST TIME-With .A.lain Cohen and Charles Denner, directed by Claude Berri. In French. (Columbia II.) THE FURy-Brian De Palma's visionary, science- fiction thriller. The script (John Farris's adaptation of his novel) is cheap gothic es- pionage occultism involving two superior beings-spiritual twins (.A.ndrew Stevens and Amy Irving) who have met only telepathical- ly But the film is so visually compelling that a viewer seems to have entered a mythic night world; no Hitchcock thriller was ever so intense, went so far, or had so many "clas- sic" sequences. With Kirk Douglas, Carrie Snodgress, and John Cassavetes. (3/ 20 /7 8 ) (Loews Ciné ) THE GOODBYE GIRL-The prolific Neil Simon is at it again; this time it's a tearful comedy with Marsha Mason and Richard Dreyfuss. She says gratuitously abrasive things to him, and he prisses his lips and tells her off. Her- bert Ross directed. (1/16/78) (Trans-Lux East, Trans-Lux 85th St., Quad Cinema, and Guild. . . . ç 72nd Street East; through April 18.) A HERO AIN'T NOTHIN' BUT A SANDWICH-With Cicely Tyson, Paul Winfield, and Larry Scott; directed by Ralph Nelson. (Olympia; through April 18.) HIGH ANXIETy-Mel Brooks' rehash of some of Hitchcock's most famous thriller effects. This is a child's idea of satire-imitations, with a funny hat and a leer. There isn't a whisper of suspense, and there are few earned laughs; all B rooks does is let us know he has seen some of the same movies we have. vVith Madeline Kahn, Cloris Leachman, Harvey Korman, and Ron Carey. (1/9/78) (Sutton.) THE HOSPITAL (1971)-That great spangled ham George C. Scott in Paddy Chayevsky's farce about the killing incompetence in a modern big-city hospitaL The picture strains for seri- ousness now and then, but even when it makes a fool of itself it's still funny. Arthur Hiller directed. (St. Marks Cinema, starting April 14.) HOUSE CALls-Walter Matthau and Glenda Jackson in a carefree pairing of splendid f. . I" .! I ! II I I }I .:t I : < : Ii f f I &- - ". ( ..., "" J. . ::1" ) 'Í I I SAFARI JACKET I I . I ! i v I A classic leisure jacket that we are offering for the first time tailored of "Trailcloth" -a soft, sueded cotton poplin, washable and extraordinarily long-wearing With authentic features such as roomy bel- lows pockets, epaulets and belt. In oyster shade. Sizes 36 to 44. $65 ----------------------- ; I ili I -- I To order by ma il: Send to Address City Sta te 7 ip Code Quantity Size Price Brooks Acct. No. American Exp. No. Expiration date Remittance enclosed $ Please add sales tax where applicable. Outside N.Y. United Parcel Delivery Area add $1.50 to cover postage and handling. D Send Charge Account Application 346 MADISON AVE., COR. 44th ST NEW YORK, N Y. 10017 con1ic talents and of equally matched intel- ligences. Miss Jackson's first view of her future lover, a doctor, looking lugubrious in mustache and beard, is from a hospital bed; he's been clamped into a football-helmet sort of brace by a testily inept old doctor (Art Carney) to mend a broken jaw. (4/3/7 8 ) (Loews Tower East.) IF . . . (1969)-Lindsay .A.nderson uses an Eng- lish school for boys as a metaphor for a rot- ting traditional society. An attempted epic on student revolt, with too many muddy un- dercurrents. With Malcolm McDowell. (Carnt'gie Hall Cinema; April 20.) IVAN THE TERRIBLE. PARTS I AND II (1944-46)-For this movie, the city of Kazan was rebuilt full scale in Central Asia with lumber imported from Siberia, and millions of rubles' worth of sets, beards, and brocades went into Eisen- stein's great, weird two-part extravaganza on the evils of tyranny. In Part I, Ivan (Nikolai Cherkassov) is crowned and then, because of the opposition of the nobles, is forced to abdi- cate; in Part II, with the help of the people, he is restored to the throne. Overpowering and operatic, the movie resembles a gigantic Expressionist mural. In Russian. (Theatre 80 St. Marks; April 20.) JOSEPH ANDREWS- vVith .A.nn-Margret and Peter Firth, directed by Tony Richardson. (Waver- ly, and Festival; starting .A.pril 14 ) J U LI A- Jane Fonda as Lillian Hellman, Jason Robards as Dashiell Hammett, and Vanessa Redgrave as Julia in the film version of Hellman's story about her smuggling bribe money into Nazi Germany, from her book of memoirs "Pentimento " Directed by Fred Zinnemann, from a script by Alvin Sargent, it has been made in conservative-classical humanist-style. The film's constraint is frus- trating, because Jane Fonda has the power and invention to go further in the character. (10/10/77) (U. A. East. Quad Cinema and I oews 83rd Triplex.) KAMOURASKA (1975)-Opacity isn't metaphysics. Anne Hébert wrote the pulp best-selling "lit- erary" melodrama, set in French Canada, on which this film is based. Claude J utra, who admirably made the quite unpretentious "My Uncle Antoine," directed it This film, in spite of the helpfully caustic and very modern pres- ence of Geneviève Bujold, is steeped in a belief about the redemptive powers of the sense of sin, which are appropriated to Catholicism when they belong just as much to Anglicanism, American Protestantism, and J udai8m. The story also indulges the ob- scurantist by linking perfectly earthly spite to witchcraft. Though the acting and the sense of the nineteenth-century period are accurate, the film's fundamental antithesis- religiosity vs. fun-is falsely put, and the re- sulting schematism halts a good director. In French. (Carnegie Hall Cinema; April 17.) THE LACEMAKER- With Isabelle Huppert and Yves Beneyton, directed by Claude Goretta In French. (72nd Street East; ;:,tarting April IQ. ) A LESSON IN LOVE (1953)-.A. rather more mid- dle-class marital comedy than one expects from Ingmar Bergman. The burned-out mar- riage of Eva Dahlbeck and Gunnar Björn- strand is rekindled when he becomes jealous of her. In Swedish (Bleecker St. Cinema; April 16.) A LITTLE NIGHT MusIc-You know what you're in for near the beginning, when the hero (Len Cariou) is greeted with "Good after- noon, Lawyer Egerman" This film is a cut above "Song of Nor\vay" and "The Blue Bird," but it's in that general sylvan-settings category. It's an adaptation of the Broadway show, which was a reworking, with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and a book by Hugh Wheeler, of Ingmar Bergman's "Smiles of a Summer Night." What was lyri- cal farce in the Bergman film has now be- come clodhopping operetta This picture has been made as if the director (Harold Prince) had never seen a movie. With Diana Rigg and Lesley-Anne Down, who manage to get a performance rhythm going in some of their scenes, and with Elizabeth Taylor. (3/20/78) (Quad Cinema; starting April 14.) LUCIA (1974)-.A. long trilogy by Humberto Solas, a young man ,\Tho has been called Cuba's Eisenstein. The first episode is melo- dramatic; the second, about the disorganized hatred felt for the dictatorial President Ma- chado, is intellectually fine and visually lyric; the third is an ironic fable about a Castro-